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Department. They met regularly with us. I think I was an ex officio member, but I may have not done that for some reason or other.
What I did in New York State at that time was based upon what we had done in Mitchel's administration, although we did it too late in Mitchel's administration. It had improved the relief situation, but because the city had no authority about economic laws it had done nothing to prevent unemployment. It had come to the conclusion that the wood yard and a night's lodging didn't solve the problem of unemployment. As a matter of fact, out of the Mitchel administration's experience we got the idea of made work and the idea of the organization of all the private jobs there were, like chores. There was the organization and pooling of those jobs in one central place so that unemployed persons could be given a day's work at mending things, or doing household chores, clearing cellars and all that sort of thing. We stimulated the average householder and citizen to have all his clean-up and repair work and odd jobs done during a period of unemployment.
Also the Mitchel administration had stated in Bruere's report that a period of unemployment was the time for a city to go into its major construction operations. While construction
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